Homecoming
by everyl1ttleth1ng
Summary: In the face of failure and despite the tyranny of time, Fitz finally manages to bring Jemma home. She cannot speak. When at last he hears her cry out in her sleep, Fitz thinks he understands. Of course, he doesn't. . A post Kree-rock reunion story. It just seems like it might take them a little time to fully untangle the knots…
1. Chapter 1

_In the face of failure and despite the tyranny of time, Fitz finally manages to bring Jemma home._

 _She cannot speak._

 _When at last he hears her cry out in her sleep, Fitz thinks he understands._

 _Of course, he doesn't._

When we very first met FitzSimmons they were "psychically linked" but it soon took a turn for the worst – always moving out of step, communicating at cross purposes.

It seems like it might take them a little time to fully untangle the knots…

* * *

She struggled out of sleep, its tentacles tangled around her limbs, its heaviness holding down her head.

In her mouth, the taste of ashes.

Her fingers curled against the hard stone beneath her but instead of cold resistance, they found the long-lost familiarity of soft flannel.

That's when she remembered that Fitz had brought her home.

.

One of the many off-grid locations the director had at his disposal was made available to her.

"For as long as you need it," she'd been assured.

 _Only if he comes with me_ , she'd silently insisted.

Despite their promises that they'd do anything to assist her, that was one sacrifice they almost refused to make. But when they saw his face they knew there was no point trying to make him remain behind without her.

Building the new transport he'd designed would have to wait. Along with almost everything else.

S.H.I.E.L.D. was at a standstill without him.

But Fitz had been at a standstill without her.

Coulson took a calculated risk, granted the two of them all the time they needed, assigned the others to pressing assignments, prepared to wait indefinitely for his scientists to heal.

Each of them alone, even damaged, were incredibly valuable assets. But together? They were formidable.

And if they could be pieced carefully, painstakingly back together? Well, S.H.I.E.L.D. could use a bit of that kind of formidable right now.

In the back of his mind lurked the possibility that by letting them go, S.H.I.E.L.D. might end up losing them entirely. Coulson didn't let himself dwell on that.

.

They'd arrived in the dark the previous evening and Fitz had put her straight to bed, shaking into her palm two of the yellow pills Dr Garner had prescribed.

Jemma had mentally traced his profile as he sat beside her on the mattress, the line of his brow in the darkness forming a crisp silhouette against the glow from the hallway light. She had wished he would lie down next to her, perhaps even hold her, a barrier against her dreams.

He had assured her he'd be in the very next room. He left both their doors ajar.

Though it still felt far away, the very next room was such a vast improvement on the light years only recently between them that she had put up no resistance. She'd even slept more than an hour at a stretch – a first since she'd been consumed anew by the blue flame of his eyes and grasped a hold of his outstretched hand, since she'd been washed up in the wave of molten rock that Fitz had forced at last to crash upon the lab's concrete floor.

.

She sat up to gaze out of the floor-to-ceiling windows.

 _Huh. The ocean._ At least that old terror had no power over her now. She wondered if the earth had any terrors left for her.

The sound of a kettle whistling reminded her of the last remaining thing she was afraid to lose. She got to her feet and padded through the unfamiliar house in pursuit of him.

From the door she watched him leaning his weight against the slate benchtop, knuckles white, elbows locked, head bowed. Out the window above him the overcast sky was grey like his cardigan, the whole image monochrome until he heard her and turned his electric blue eyes on her.

"You're awake."

She nodded, shuffling forward, hiding her hands in the cuffs of his navy jumper that she had no memory of putting on.

At the slightest raising of her arms towards him, Fitz took one giant stride and pulled her into his embrace. He was urgent and gentle as he had been from the moment his mastery forced her prison to release her.

All the frightening powers and authorities she'd been cowed by alone – his talent, his determination, his loyalty had conquered. And now he stood against the backdrop of a whistling kettle, wearing a cardigan and holding her close.

The silver grey of the wool might as well have been the gleam of burnished armour. When _(if)_ she found her voice again she'd tell him.

For now she concentrated on the soft cotton of his navy t-shirt against her cheek, the firm warmth of muscle and tissue emanating from beneath.

She focused on the sensation of the pads of his fingers in her hair, pressing lightly against the base of her skull.

She nestled into the confines of his arms, resting her brow against his throat, the rhythm of his pulse keeping this new time that she wasn't going to let herself lose.

She slid her arms around his waist and hoped he wouldn't mind that her hands dipped under the hem of his t-shirt to splay against the warm skin of his lower back. She felt him shiver but his grip on her tightened so she didn't let go.

This body of his, his very presence, was so achingly familiar and yet so new. May had conveyed, with her characteristic economy of language, that from the moment he'd discovered her capture he'd worked to transform himself, to become everything he felt he needed to be to get her back. Perhaps the physical training had been just as much about managing his anger and his grief. The mental and emotional discipline he acquired was all focused on bringing that anger and grief to an end. It was all focused on bringing her home.

Regardless, where he'd once been all angles and bones, now he was rock-solid. Where he'd briefly been stutters and helplessness, now he was unflinching strength.

She tried to trace the threads of this man back to the dinner date she'd been snatched away from almost a year before. Whether those threads stretched far enough to connect him to the struggler she'd found at the base on her return from HYDRA, she couldn't say.

The man who'd given her his last breath, who'd tried to follow her out of a plane at who-knows-how-many-thousand feet, who'd blindly followed her onto that plane in the first place. Was there any connection between these arms around her now and that brilliant boy she met at the Academy?

White blood cells last little more than a year, red blood cells four months. Skin cells survive only two or three weeks, colon cells four days. All the procreative potential of a sperm cell, spent after only seventy-two hours.

Those combined facts led some dubious pop-science publications to jump to the conclusion that you were a whole new person after seven years.

But Jemma knew otherwise.

She knew cells.

And brain cells are for life.

This truth had provided Fitz no comfort in the midst of his struggle. Neurons in the cerebral cortex are not replaced when they die.

But whatever he'd lost to the sea was obviously superfluous. He'd harnessed what was left to achieve things nobody else could. And it seemed, warming her right to her toes, that all the bits of his brain with which he'd loved her were very much alive.

"I'm gonna go for a walk and get some firewood. Want to come with?" he asked, loosening his grip of her to rub some warmth into her upper arms.

His skin slipping from under her fingers felt like loss but, in the glare, the scruff on his cheeks glowed a warm gold.

She nodded.

"I'll find your coat."

In only a moment, Fitz returned in his jacket and blue beanie, holding out her navy duffle coat to help her into it.

The grey of the ocean and the slate sky mirrored Jemma's mood as they meandered along the sand of the deserted beach gathering armfuls of driftwood. The wind was bitter against her face, whipping at the tendrils of hair that escaped her hood. Nevertheless, the chill felt somehow life-affirming, as did the proximity of Fitz, never moving far from her side.

They carried the driftwood back into the warmth and shelter of their home-for-now and Fitz settled her on the couch with a mug of tea. He busied himself building them a fire, kneeling on the stone hearth. Jemma watched him from the grey leather couch, her legs tucked underneath her, and thought of all the things she needed to tell him despite her lack of immediate means.

The kindling he had carefully laid beneath the snarls of dry white wood whooshed into flame. Jemma allowed herself to be mesmerised by the flickering blaze, the only thing on the entire horizon burning brighter than Fitz's blue gaze as he rocked back onto his haunches to admire his handiwork.

He got to his feet and padded past her in his socks, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze before disappearing into the kitchen. When he returned he handed her a bowl of steaming rice pudding sprinkled with cinnamon and plonked himself down on the couch next to her.

Her look of surprised gratitude elicited a shrug from Fitz. "I woke up ridiculously early and I couldn't get back to sleep. I know you used to love it."

The long unaccustomed expression forming on her face felt like it must have been a smile.

Fitz's answering grin contained so much relief she wondered whether he might have thought he'd never see her smile again.

"We can _live_ on rice pudding if you want," he laughed. "That's one recipe I have actually managed to master."

She gave a non-committal little shrug but worked harder to hold onto her smile.

The first mouthful of food that had been lovingly prepared for her, rather than just having water added, reawakened her palate. Her eyes fluttered closed and her head tilted back against the leather in a way that made Fitz laugh.

"I don't think you have _ever_ been this easy to impress," he chuckled, but immediately heard the echo of the reason why in his words and the laughter fell away from his eyes.

Jemma wanted to tell him it was alright. She wanted to coax laughter out of him and stoke it up in him the way she'd watched him stoking the flames earlier. Perhaps then she'd be able to laugh along with him. Instead she could only reach for his knee, pressing her fingertips into the denim-clad dips between bone and cartilage.

His smile had turned sad but she already knew about sadness. That wasn't one of the things she needed to re-learn. Instead, she wanted him to teach her lightness and joy, tenderness and comfort, desperation and passion and release.

 _Patience, Jemma._

* * *

 _Love to hear what you think lovelies! I think this might be my first go of just trying to be serious and not silly at all. It's been really hard!_

 _If you prefer silliness, I'm getting it out of my system in another post-Kree-rock work-in-progress entitled In Case Of Emergency, Break Glass._

 _Bring on September and a glorious FitzSimmons reunion! (fingers crossed)_


	2. Chapter 2

The screen might as well have been flickering silver static for all the interest television seemed to hold for her. Books and cards she waved away as more inanity than she could stand. Their one attempt at chess, a long-held rivalry that could only just be described as 'friendly', dissolved because Fitz couldn't cope with Jemma passively watching him instead of intently plotting her own gambit while determinedly deconstructing his. Perhaps the passing of time didn't bother her anymore. She seemed to feel no pressing need to fill it or to use it judiciously.

Fitz didn't quite know how to trace that back to the Jemma he'd been hunting for. The Jemma he'd found seemed content to while away the hours cradled in his arms.

He wished he'd known how to ask for this sort of therapy when he'd woken from the coma. He supposed it was better late than never. He could almost feel the pieces of his heart shuffling their way back to wholeness.

Fitz couldn't help but think of all the time he'd spent paralysed by his uncertainty – _if_ he could touch her, _how_ he could touch her, how long his arms could linger before they'd become unwelcome. He had dreamed about a future for them in which all the words had been said and hearts had aligned. Despite the fact that _no_ words had been said, he imagined it would be sort of like this – her exercising a cosy sort of ownership of his form.

She might as well. She did own him, regardless.

She sat herself so close to him that he had to wrap his arm around her simply to find space for it. When he'd unthinkingly collapsed into the single armchair closest to the fire, she'd settled herself on his lap, extending her bare feet towards the hearth and tucking her head into the crook of his neck. After lunch she'd emerged from her room with her hairbrush and handed it to him, settling herself on the floor between his knees. It was almost every scenario in the much-thumbed leaves of Fitz's closely guarded mental playbook for that future in which he and Jemma were together and happy.

Jemma's hair had grown long again in the year she'd been gone but there was a sleek wildness to it now that marked her apart from the carefully pulled-together cadet he'd met so long ago. No matter how long he allowed himself to stroke the brush from her scalp to the tips, letting the dark silk slip through his fingers, he couldn't seem to tame it. He didn't mind that at all. A far more-concerning disparity was the lack of spark in her amber eyes.

Right now, there was a kind of togetherness, but not the full-disclosure intimacy he craved. There was a subdued joy concocted from a range of emotions, but relief was the most prominent ingredient. Fitz, as always, needed more. But not yet.

The fact that Jemma hadn't spoken wasn't worrying him. He knew exactly what it was like to have torrents of words to say yet be condemned to watch them leak out haphazardly in an erratic drip drip drip. And he knew first hand the relief of finding kindness rather than pity. He'd waited almost a year to hear her voice again. Having her in his arms made it infinitely easier to wait a little longer.

Fitz thought of the sketchbook and graphite pencils he'd hastily shoved into his luggage. Ostensibly he'd included them so he could spend some time drawing – a hobby in a past life. It had occurred to him that they could also serve in case she wanted to write the words she couldn't say. He wouldn't fetch them until he sensed frustration in her silence. For now she simply seemed at peace listening to the crackle of the blazing fire and the crash of the ocean against the cliffs below.

.

It was in the blackness of the hours after midnight that he first heard her voice, rousing him groggily from sleep. She was crying out to him.

"Leo!"

He threw back the covers and in his rush to get to her, stumbled over the shoes he'd kicked off in the middle of his room.

"Jemma? Are you alright?" He dropped to his knees by the bed, seeking her eyes in the dim light provided by the bulb he'd just snapped on in the hallway adjoining their rooms.

She lay curled on her side, the dark tresses he'd let run through his fingers all afternoon now splayed chaotically across the pillow.

"Jemma?" Fitz ventured.

She was silent a moment.

"Leo?" she murmured at last, eyes still closed.

He stroked her hair back from her face. "I'm here."

"I've been gone for so long," she whispered, a deep crease furrowing her pale brow.

"I _know_ ," he sighed. "I can barely believe I have you back."

"He's not here," she whimpered and Fitz felt a hot flare of anger deep in his chest.

"Who had you, Jemma? What did he do to you?"

"So far away," she moaned, as if she hadn't heard his question.

"Who was it?" he insisted. "Please, Jemma, tell me."

"What if I never see him again?"

Fitz felt a vibration in his chest. It was an unpleasant sensation he'd experienced plenty of times before. Jemma was always the reason, even when she wasn't the catalyst.

A single tear spilled out from beneath each of her shuttered eyelids, then another, then another.

As each new tear fell, Fitz brushed them away with the pad of his thumb. "Shhh. You're safe."

She gradually quietened, as if the tension she'd been feeling had flowed out with her tears.

"Jemma?"

No response.

Her breathing grew steady. Fitz assumed she must have drifted back to sleep. He watched the gentle rise and fall of her chest a moment before rocking back onto his heels and getting to his feet.

Padding back to his own room, he fell onto the bed and slunk under the covers with only his cold confusion to cuddle up to.

Having her home was blissful relief.

Not knowing what she'd been through was torture.

Everything in him wanted to believe that all this time she had been as wholly consumed by thoughts of him as he'd been by thoughts of her. But one deep-seated fear had haunted him from the moment she'd been taken – the possibility that she'd been taken somewhere better.

Here he was, desperately wanting to believe that he'd saved her, but what if in pulling her back to earth, he'd pulled her away from somewhere she was happy? Some _one_ who made her happy? Someone who deserved her.

 _Either way_ , he thought bitterly, _Now I'm the one who gets to know she's safe._

At least now that she'd found her voice, there was the possibility that in the morning she could tell him herself.

.

Fitz woke reluctantly in the grey glare of mid-morning. Hours of tossing and turning had passed before he'd finally succumbed to sleep. Now his morning was closer to midday than it had come in years.

He sat up quickly, suddenly afraid for Jemma moving around the unfamiliar house alone. Shrugging his jumper over his bare chest and shuffling into his jeans he half-jogged down the stairs to find her.

It seemed their minimal survival skills at least extended to the building and maintaining of a decent domestic fire; probably their mutual British origins. Jemma was curled up in the same corner of the couch, her fingers wrapped around her empty mug, once more mesmerised by the orange glow on the hearth.

She startled slightly when Fitz appeared, moving silently on his bare feet.

"Morning."

She greeted him with her gaze.

"Need a top up?" he offered.

Jemma nodded, silently holding out her mug.

Fitz carried it thoughtfully through to the kitchen and placed it next to his unwashed mug from the previous day as he refilled the kettle at the tap.

"Have you eaten yet?" he called from the kitchen.

No answer.

Eventually she appeared in the doorway shaking her head.

Perhaps today would be another silent day after all. He wasn't going to push it.

"I am going to make you the fry-up to end all fry-ups," he called from the depths of the fridge, gathering armfuls of supplies.

He kicked the fridge door closed with his foot and looked up to find her sliding onto a stool on the opposite side of the kitchen bench watching him with a tiny smile.

Fitz had long known he'd slay dragons for a glimpse of that smile. He prepared to settle into court-jester mode to see how long he could bask in it.

.

That night Jemma had gone upstairs early so Fitz had followed, settling into bed next door with the first novel he'd had the leisure to pick up since he'd stepped onto the Bus. So long unaccustomed to fiction and in such desperate need of escapism, he was hooked in a heartbeat and time flashed by without him even noticing. So absorbed was he that he had barely moved a muscle until he heard her cry out.

"Leo!"

He glanced at his watch as he rushed to her side, shocked by the sudden lateness of the hour.

"I've left him behind, I've left him behind," she was murmuring agitatedly when he dropped to his knees by the bed.

Fitz couldn't help the pang of jealousy flaring in his gut, though this time it took him less by surprise.

"Who, Jem?" he asked. "Who have you left behind?"

She tossed fitfully from side to side before settling back onto her pillow facing him, eyes closed, breathing shallow.

"He looked at me like I was all he had," she whispered, distraught. "He _loved_ me."

Fitz managed to stop himself from saying _Isn't that how_ I _look at you? Can't it be enough that_ I _love you?_ Instead, he swallowed back the bitter hurt and stroked her hair away from the heat of her brow.

"I'll let the team know that there's someone else we need to rescue," he asked. "I'm sure we can replicate the conditions that released you." _Though perhaps not the motivating sense of desperation._ "Maybe we can get him back too?"

Just like the previous night, her glistening tears began to bloom beneath her lashes and Fitz felt as though his tenuously re-constructed heart was threatening to disintegrate on him again.

The lab couldn't make anything happen for a few hours yet. He'd call the base first thing and see if Mack could get right on to it.

She quietened again as Fitz gently wiped away her tears and within a moment she was breathing deeply, asleep once more. He slowly got to his feet and padded out of her room, though this time he headed down to the kitchen for tea.

Obscured by the noise of the kettle, Fitz allowed himself his first breakdown since he'd pulled her from the molten rock. The hope that had bubbled away in him for so long now, that had found what he thought was its culmination in simply pulling her free, was starting to sputter and fizzle. Doomed to hopelessly love one woman who was apparently destined to love another. _Anyone but him._

No, that wasn't quite it. Jemma loved him alright. She always had. He was her best friend in the world. But as they both knew, it wasn't enough for him.

Just before she'd been taken it had seemed that maybe she wanted more too. He never got to find out.

Fitz scrubbed at his wet face with the cuffs of his cardigan. _Bloody Jemma_. He'd do anything for her, even if it meant going out in search of someone else for her to love instead of him.

At last he shuffled back up the stairs with his mug, glancing in at her once more on the way to his room. She was tossing and turning restlessly. This time though, her eyes were open. Her anxious features softened as soon as she saw him.

"Jem?" he whispered from the door. "Want some tea?"

She nodded, shoving back her pillow in the dimness of her room and sitting up to lean against it. She gathered her long dark hair from its wayward tangles and twisted it over one shoulder, her light eyes watching him.

He crossed the room to perch on the edge of her bed. "Mind sharing this one or should I make you another cup?"

She shrugged and reached out for the cup he was holding.

Fitz held it back a moment. "You recognise the supreme sacrifice I'm making, right?" he asked, desperate to lighten his own sombre mood.

Jemma only rolled her eyes and held out her hand more insistently until he turned the mug so she could take it by the handle.

He watched her eyes practically rolling back in her head as she savoured the first sip, the exhale that interrupted the column of rising steam a silent sigh of contentment. She was clearly not yet at the stage where she could take hot tea for granted. This made him unreasonably angry.

After a long silence, Jemma handed him the empty mug she'd been nursing, her face mildly apologetic.

"Next time get me to make you your own," he grumbled good-naturedly as he got to his feet but Jemma grabbed his hand.

Turning to face her was pure déjà vu. Her eyes sparkled with the same unshed tears and somehow her silence held just as eloquent an entreaty for him to stay. And they still hadn't talked about it, any of it.

This time her _maybe there is_ , the words that had rung in his head all this time like tinnitus, took the form of her other hand softly encircling his wrist. He sensed her gentle tug as she slid imperceptibly away from him, leaving an inviting expanse of space on the bed between them.

Fitz wanted nothing more than to fall down beside her. He'd imagined every possible version of a reunion between them and so many scenarios had wandered into this treacherous territory. But he'd learnt that every time the fantasy came to an end, the bitter aftertaste of longing and the hangover of guilt hurt somehow more than her absence.

And then there was whoever it was she'd been weeping for.

"I can't," he whispered, trying not to let himself see the hurt in her eyes or show her the hurt in his.

She gave his hand another gentle tug and the question in her expression turned pleading. His anger flared again at the injustice of it all.

"I can't, Jemma" he insisted. "Not now that there's someone else."

Jemma's eyes widened in shock and her hands released him, dropping to the mattress like they'd turned to lead.

At least now she knew that that he knew.

He turned on his heel and walked out of her room, little more than an empty cup to cling to.

* * *

Oh dear... so sad... But never fear, there's more to come!

Thank you so much to all those kind people for liking the first bit. I hope you like this bit as well!? Please let me know what you think!


	3. Chapter 3

Jemma knew that if Fitz had heard her tossing and turning there would be no way she could hide the sobs that threatened to rip her in half if she kept them in any longer.

Summoning all that remained of her limited poise, she grabbed for some of her old, familiar clothes and half-jogged to the bathroom, finding her way through swimming eyes.

She wrenched on the taps in the shower as far as they would go, momentarily taken aback by the torrent of water that gushed from the faucet. Stepping in, the pressure of the spray felt like needles, the temperature so hot she hoped she might melt and be washed down the drain.

Only once ensconced in the flood did she let herself go. Her salt tears mingled with the scalding cascade, her wrenching sobs stifled by the roar of water thundering against glass.

Some considerable time passed before she could form coherent thoughts.

 _Of course._ It had been almost a year. He'd long ago have given up hope of ever seeing her again.

She never even knew what was going to transpire over their ill-fated dinner anyway.

He had told her there was nothing to discuss. What if he only ever intended to let her down gently?

Then there was the question she was trying not to ask herself.

 _Who?_

Surely it couldn't be Skye. Jemma had been more than a little jealous of the deeper friendship that blossomed between Fitz and Skye while things between them had been so strained. But she was sure she'd observed something developing between Skye and Lincoln.

Again, so much time had gone by. Who knew what she might have missed?

And there must have been an influx of new agents in the time she'd been missing. Maybe Coulson had found a replacement for her. _Maybe whoever-she-was had been a replacement in more ways than one_ , she thought bitterly.

When Jemma finally emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, the back of her legs still raw from the scalding water, she could hear a rumble of voices from the bottom of the stairs. Fitz and Mack.

"Yeah, I think we can do it, Turbo," Mack was saying, a slight crackle over the connection. "But are you sure you heard right?"

"I'm sure," Fitz sighed resignedly. "Besides, we should have repeated the process just in case there were others anyway." There was a pause. "I can't believe I didn't insist on it at the time."

Jemma heard Mack's gentle chuckle. "You were sort of preoccupied, Fitz," the big man said. "No one could blame you."

"Just run the tests for me okay, Mack? And let me know if you find anything."

"Things that bad, Fitz?" Mack asked quietly.

She didn't hear Fitz's response but she heard Mack's low whistle in reply.

"Want me to suggest to Coulson that he send someone else over there?" Mack was asking. "You could just come back and hang out here for a while if it's getting too much. You've been through a lot, man."

If Fitz responded at all, it was so quiet she couldn't catch it, until she heard a soft sob.

Somehow the pair of them spanned years and countries, light years and galaxies, and yet they always dragged each other back down to this same confined space of pain.

Her own tears springing afresh, she ran back to her room on silent feet and started throwing her meagre possessions into the bag someone else had packed for her.

Jemma quietly carried the bag downstairs and deposited it next to the front door. On the hall table she noticed a sketch pad and pencils. She shrugged on her coat and grabbed them, slipping silently out the door, sealing in the sound of Fitz and Mack's conversation.

It didn't take her long to find a spot on the beach that offered enough shelter from the wind. Curling up on the sand with her hood pulled over her ears and the sketch pad on her lap, she started to write.

So much of their struggle had come not from lies, but from their mutual failure to speak the whole truth. Jemma didn't know who his new someone was so she had no allegiance that she felt afraid to trespass.

At last, Fitz would know it all and then he could decide.

 _Dear Leo,_

 _I hope you'll forgive me for stealing your sketch pad, but it's been almost a year in the making and, try as I might, for some reason I can't seem to deliver this speech in the traditional way._

 _Despite your telling me you've moved on, I haven't, and I don't think I ever will. Perhaps at least getting this off my chest at last will give me a chance._

 _Leo, I'm in love with you. I don't think that will come as too much of a shock. The certain hope that you would be searching for me is all that has kept me alive. And you did it. You found me, though perhaps after the first few days, weeks, months, you didn't really expect to succeed._

 _It's selfish of me – you have someone else, but I don't know who she is so this doesn't feel like too much of a betrayal. I want you to be happy, Leo, I do. I just sort of hoped you might want to be happy with me. And as painful as this might be for you to read, and as much as I want to be understanding after I've been missing for so long, it hurts… God, Leo, it hurts so incredibly deeply that you could have chosen someone else. I thought the ordeal I've just been through, which one day I hope to be able to have, not just the voice, but the strength to describe, would be my most painful trial. Trust me when I say that it was mild compared to those few words you said to me only hours ago: "Not now that there's someone else."_

 _If there's even the slightest chance that telling you this opens up a choice you have to make, don't worry, there's no time pressure to make it. Remember my theory about romantic half-life? One needs to allow oneself at least half as long as the time spent in love to fully recover._

 _While I was gone it occurred to me that I've been in love with you ever since I identified you as the most interesting person at the Academy. That was roughly two days after we first met so I'll be susceptible to any charm you want to turn my way for a long time yet. I'm kind of hoping the same might apply to you._

 _If you should ever decide that you want me, I'll be ready and more than willing._

 _I know now, with so much certainty, that there will never be anyone else for me but you._

 _Love,_

 _Jemma_

A reoccurring whistle on the wind grew slowly louder and more distinct. She scrambled to her feet, brushing away tears. Fitz was calling for her.

She stepped out from behind the grey rocks that had offered her shelter to see him running along the beach, frantically hunting for her. His panicked voice was getting raw as he cried out her name.

She walked right away from the rocks to make herself more visible, her navy coat stark against the backdrop of white sand.

When he saw her, the relief almost folded him in half, his hands clutching at his abdomen. He half jogged the rest of the distance between them and pulled her into his arms much like he'd done that first morning in the kitchen, one hand gently cradling the back of her head. His tenderness melted her against him.

"Just doing a spot of sketching?" Fitz managed to laugh at last when he noticed the pad in her hand. "God, Jem, I saw your bag by the door and I completely lost it." He stepped back, this time pressing his hand to his sternum. "I didn't know what to think. I have no idea what you've been through."

Jemma held out the pad, offering it to him. His blue eyes watched hers as he took it but she had to turn away, to try to get some distance between them so that he could finally hear her.

She walked a little way up the beach and he didn't immediately follow.

* * *

 _One more chapter to come to bring this cathartic (for me!) little piece to an end._  
 _Sorry if you were hoping for plot._  
 _I gots no plots, only the feels!_

 _If you feel like something a little more light-hearted to help you cope with this Jemma-shaped mystery, you may like to investigate "In Case of Emergency, Break Glass" - it is extremely silly._

 _Please let me know what you think of this chapter, peeps! Reviews make me happy!_


	4. Chapter 4

Fitz just watched her a moment, huddled into the hood of her coat as she walked away from him, before he glanced down at what she'd handed him.

His eyes scanned her familiar { _beloved_ } hand-writing, barely managing to track from one word to the other. He had to force himself to knuckle down and focus. At every second phrase he wanted to run to her, but he held himself back so that he could hear every word that she wished she could say.

Fitz couldn't begin to fathom where she got the idea that he had someone else but he didn't remotely care because there was only ever one person for him and she was crouched on the sand a few feet away as if cowering in expectation of a blow.

What bubbled up from deep within him was giddy, giggly, utterly unanticipated joy.

When he saw her tentatively turn her head to catch a glimpse of his reaction, he couldn't hold himself back. He dived at her, yelling gleeful nonsense, crash-tackling her against the cold sand, pulling her into his arms.

And suddenly she was laughing too, as if someone knocked the top off the fire-hydrant. Laughter gushed out of her like fireworks, like a flock of doves, like an enormous cloud of bright balloons released into the sky.

Fitz rolled onto his back, head tilted back in the relief of connecting at last, pulling her with him so that she looked down into his blue eyes against the grey beach, rivulets of white sand cascading down the sides of her dark hood and forming miniature shifting dunes on the plaid of his shirt.

She grinned, her raised eyebrows asking the question that his gleefulness had already more than answered.

Fitz looked up at her, the desperate sadness of the past colliding momentously with the exuberance of the present. He grinned back but was unable to check the tears that rolled down his face.

And she spoke. "I love you, Leo."

Jemma's eyes widened at the sound of her own voice. Surprise turned to satisfaction.

"There, I said it." She was beaming. "About bloody time."

Her amber eyes clouded with emotion. She leaned down to tenderly kiss away each of Fitz's salt tears, resting her head in the crook of his neck.

"You packed your bag," he croaked. "I thought you were going to leave."

"No!" She shook her head emphatically. "I thought _you'd_ want to leave once, you know…"

"Jemma," Fitz said. "There'll _never_ be anyone else."

She gave a little huff and rolled away from him. When Fitz sat up, she was looking out to sea.

"Why didn't you say that the minute you pulled me out?" she whispered, not quite meeting his eye. "Why didn't you hold on to me, refuse to let go?"

Next to her, Fitz dropped his head into his hands.

"The whole time I was gone," she went on, "I meditated on the moment that you would find me. In my head it seemed so obvious how it would go. You would grab me and kiss me and tell me you loved me the very first moment you saw me. We'd be together and, well, _together_. At long _bloody_ last."

She paused for a moment.

"When you didn't, I began to think I'd read everything wrong. And then when I tried to pull you into bed with me earlier, you muttered something about someone else." She paused and looked away. "You can see why I was confused."

Fitz sought her eyes and nodded. He felt too ashamed to speak.

"I've been having these nightmares," she said. "Every time I close my eyes it's the same."

Fitz shuffled closer to her, tentatively wrapping his arm around her shoulders.

Jemma closed her eyes, reliving them. "I know that I've left you behind. I know that you're so far away. I'm not sure if I'll ever see you again. And all I can see is you looking at me, the way you used to, you know?"

She glanced over at him and couldn't help a small smile. "Yes, just like that."

Fitz grinned.

"Like I'm all you have," she said, turning her face toward him. "Like you love me."

"I _do_ love you, Jemma," Fitz whispered, hearing the resounding echoes of her mutters in the dark and realising at long last that all her nightmares had been about the loss of _him_.

He brought his free hand to her face, tucking a flyaway tendril of hair behind her ear and then gently stroking his thumb along the delineation of her cheekbone as she looked out to sea.

"Am I too late?" he whispered, half-smiling.

She turned to him, confused. "Too late for what?"

"To grab you and kiss you and never let you go?"

Jemma smiled shyly and shook her head, eyes dropping to his lips. Fitz's eyelids flickered closed as their heads inclined towards one another, the culmination of a trajectory set in motion at least a decade earlier.

Fitz felt as though his blood had been syphoned out and fizzy lemonade ran through his veins in its place. He'd been drunk before, he'd been triumphant, he'd received all sorts of praise and accolades at a staggeringly young age but none of it came close to the heady sensation of Jemma's soft lips brushing ever so lightly against his.

At last Fitz was achieving what he felt had been his highest and dearest ambition, even if it had gone unacknowledged for so many years. He was kissing Jemma Simmons and she was kissing him back.

.

Late that afternoon through her glass wall of windows, the dove grey of the overcast sky turned almost charcoal and Jemma watched as the rolling storm clouds mimicked the crashing tide, the pelting rain like chiaroscuro shading across the seascape.

Behind her, his chest pressed against her back, anchoring her in his arms, Fitz slept – his steady breathing warming her bare shoulder.

After a decade of loving him, at last she knew what it was like to have his eyes, hands and mouth attentively map her every contour; to hear him cry out her name in the ecstasy of her attention; to melt in the agonising tenderness of his gaze as he held himself above her and, afterwards, to weep with him in the bittersweet afterglow of a rightness they'd so long and so uselessly denied one another.

Her conclusion?

 _This._

 _This. Every day. For the rest of days._

 _This._

* * *

 _Ok, so I probably unnecessarily shifted up the rating but, you know, just in case..._

 _And we're done!_

 _Thank you for those who have been so nice to me about this I-have-to-feel-better-about-FitzSimmons fic!_

 _Sorry for the total lack of plot - I have no compelling theories about what that rock actually did to her. I do have one LUDICROUS theory though, and if you'd like to read it, pop on over to my other WIP entitled "In Case Of Emergency, Break Glass" which is really just an excuse to be silly._

 _If you liked this, I'd love to hear from you, reviews are the awesomest!_


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